ireland assumes that the six month presidency of the e.u. facing a wide range of issues from a challenging european agenda to its own ailing finances it's. an eleventh hour deal looks like it might fall through putting america back on the edge of the fiscal cliff. and it's in with the new around the globe we digest the highlights of two thousand and twelve and look at the headlines that could have been if things had turned out differently.

in broadcasting live from our studios in moscow this is r t certainly glad to have you with us. just over two years ago ireland was bankrupt and being bailed out to rescue its failed economy on top of that it's a now the country's turn to take on the next six month presidency of the european council as laura smith reports the celtic tiger has some hard graft ahead of it. it's all changed by the e.u. presidency as takes a six month rotating challenge on the first of january not the ovi choice islands one of the pegs the countries that have the nice stable economies in europe and showed off islands the first country to take hold in the presidency of the twenty seven nation while being propped up by a new i.m.f. money so for the next six months the e.u. and its a german problems will be presided over by one of its weakest and most problematic

members so what specific challenges does face in europe over the six months of its presidency. the european economy is slowing and the crisis is nowhere near over secondly it must preside over leaders actually agreeing to an e.u. budget for the year two thousand and fourteen to two thousand and twenty something they spectacularly failed to do so in fall and thirdly there is a problem coming from right here in london increasing british opposition to brussels and the threat to european cohesion that uses the irish government expects the e.u. presidency to coast in excess of seventy million euros money the country can ill afford and what will it be spent on twenty four million on catering accommodation and transport for example and another twenty million extra governments. and investment advisor patrick young forecasts

a gloomy future for the euro zone saying a survival of the euro would be miraculous. what's happened so far has been swinging cuts on the masses and we really haven't managed to make the remotest impact upon the whole nation itself greece is still fundamentally in a huge problematic situation it does not remotely have a functioning government system that fiscally is going to manage to organize itself in any which way possible to manage to get through the continuing swen cuts that need to take place out of course then we're looking at the whole issue of the demonstrators are the governments listening well the truth is the government's counter ford to listen because what we're seeing within the european union even if the euro has survived miraculously for twelve months government has run out of money the european union's western socialist model of spending huge amounts of

money borrowing even greater amounts of money and hoping to pay everything manion our or indeed thirty years from mine yana simply does not work. and two thousand and twelve saw something of a rise of the machines as drone warfare shot into the headlines american unmanned aircraft killing civilians abroad and the approval of drone use for keeping tabs on people inside the u.s. those were the topics that drew fire from abby martin the host of r.t. is breaking the set and she thinks things will get worse in two thousand and thirteen. really when we're talking about drones actually a really serious topic because people are under this notion that drones are somehow precise they're the good way to fight the war on terror but really they completely are counterintuitive they create in the harbor more terrorists they have a ninety eight percent failure rate i mean so why are we using and i mean it's just amazing to me that this president is rain on drones and taking on more and more

drones and not only that but i mean the surveillance drones are going to happen in this country in two thousand and thirteen congress passed a bill to now authorize surveillance drones all over the united states so this is just not going to stop it's going to get worse aside from the from the deaths and the double tap drones that we have in the middle eastern countries now is going to create a chilling effect where people aren't going to want to dissent as much and that's the real problem with the online privacy the online erosion of our civil liberties as well as people are going to speak out as much if they feel like they're being watched a last minute deal on the american fiscal cliff was passed by the senate in the final hours before the deadline but it has to go before the house of representatives the original deal agreed to raise taxes on americans making more than four hundred fifty thousand dollars per year but the house has postponed the vote indefinitely calling for more spending cuts lawrence freeman editor at the executive intelligence review magazine says nothing can save the u.s. economy from crashing over the fiscal cliff. but in any way this whole

operation. in the forest to work with. nothing in the. world. economy we're seeing right now again with twenty seven million people unemployed and missing boy you have forty nine point seven million people that we poverty you have tens of millions of people going to read minds to get their food so this question of the physical tommy in the well for the population is not good at all for nothing it's going to be resolved and we're going to get aggressively to change the whole twenty fifth i'm sure that with legal separation of the banks and now we need some of the there are these where this bill is passed today or tomorrow obama is live we nothing good we people with. and now let's take

a look at how two thousand and twelve on the whole unfolded for america last year was a success for barack obama who secured his second u.s. presidency a washington correspondent says he not only succeeded in snatching victory from arch rival mitt romney but also votes from the third party candidates as well. there were cheers of relief here when he won i would say because the alternative was thought to be so much worse many voted out of fear that romney could win for them he was another george w. bush so whether americans have fallen out of love with obama the two thousand and eight euphoria was gone that's for sure back then there were these crowds you know in the streets all across the country shedding tears of joy so bad in their view where eight years of bush president obama was to get the savior and then he went and saved the banks saved the auto industry something he took a special pride in during the election campaign but across the country people remained out of work and are still out of force so this time president obama ran

under the banner it could have been so much worse as you imagine it was not a better deal or a national euphoria it was more like you have no choice but to choose me kind of something that shocked me as i was covering the election here it was it was the second debate between obama and romney i'm sure you remember if you remember that i just presidential nominee from the green party joel stein was arrested right outside the venue where the debate was taking place she was protesting for exclusion from the state and nobody like no news channel period mentioned her arrest none and i was switching channels for hours to see if anything was said about that and he was nothing i can imagine what the reaction would be here in the states if a presidential candidate is the other big country was arrested in the media there would be but eventually but apparently it happens in the u.s. no big deal presidential candidates get arrested all the time right well there was some irony in that yes anyway during the election campaign the mainstream media has

been focused on nothing else and no one else with these two candidates and we are t.v. as you remember of course zogby is saw an opportunity there to show what others don't and we hosted the debate. the end of the year sambrook obama's victory overshadowed by the primary school shooting in connecticut it led the president to pledge an end to the epidemic of gun violence or he's tom hartman takes a look at whether the land of the free is ready to loosen its grip on the right to carry a firearm my guess is what we're going to see is a cosmetic change we're going to see probably the or the assault weapons ban come back they'll be a fair number of loopholes in it but you know the u.s. is not going to end up going the way that's what's a longer israel have done or many most european countries have done australia when john howard was president one thousand nine hundred eight when there was a mass slaughter and then they said ok that's it we're going to buy back all the guns and it's not going to happen here there's just too much money being made with guns insane supreme court or at least five right wing crazies out of the nine on

the supreme court decided that even though the second amendment says in order to maintain a well regulated militia necessary for the for the security of a free state the right to you know you people have the right to own guns that's half of it the other half of it is that the supreme court also said that corporations interest groups lobbying groups billionaires can throw unlimited amounts of money at politicians freedom of speech but not for the whistleblower to break news a correspondent joining us on his challenges throughout the year reports on what twenty twelve meant for him. more news today violence has once again flared up. these are the images seen

from the streets of canada. for asians to rule the day. choose your language. because we can we know if you're going to stay still some. choose to consume. and choose to use the degree to. choose the stories that impact the. truth. to.

live from moscow this is our team glad he's back with us it has been a tough twelve months for the world's top whistleblower join a song shoes spent half of two thousand and twelve under house arrest and the remainder in the ecuadorian embassy in london our correspondents are first has been following his ups and downs throughout the year a lot of you say wiki leaks in jail is like did mole in the you know t. the media organizations have done in decades we've really had a front seat view of everything that's been going oh we've had him at the beginning of the year of fighting the extradition to sweden we saw his the pill rejected we then saw that dramatic twist in the title when he went into the i could do it on the scene seeking asylum. in the songs and certainly the british media we see a lot of the time who quite viciously especially during the course of this year with these. events happening surrounding julian assange a lot of people would put that down payment simply to jealousy. as the syrian

conflict enters its twenty second month international envoy lakhdar brahimi says that the crisis must be solved in two thousand and thirteen and wants his peace plan to help achieve that but as the new year rang in heavy clashes and shelling was reported near the capital middle east expert pepe escobar believes the will to stop the bloodshed should also come from outside syria it's very sad to say to everybody all over the world that the top job political threads are of two thousand and thirteen is going to be the top geopolitical tragedy of two thousand and eleven the rape of syria the only possibility it would be that the opposition. in a syrian way this sides not to listen to the saudis the turks the dieties the americans the brits and the french and they sit down with the assad government and they will work out

a transitional government or at least the for an additional period leading to free and fair elections is this going to happen not like the recent conflict in gaza is into putting israel planning even more settlements in the occupied palestinian territories that's despite saber rattling from hamas and fatah who are vowing to rearm and defend themselves by all means our middle east correspondent paula sleeper outlines how this might affect the region's future. if you look at what's happening on the ground israel continues to announce a settlement construction and the palestinians continue to say that for as long as these announcements continue they will be no resumption of peace talks it wasn't so long ago that the palestinians were awarded upgraded status after united nations but you cannot detract from the fact that we still have palestinian faction groups hamas and fatah who always seem to me at each other's throats in this in a month these radios will go to the polls and by all predictions they will really lead the israeli prime minister benjamin netanyahu for another term of office and

it doesn't seem as if he has an olive branch so certainly the prognosis for any kind of peace moves is fog let's hope that as tough as it will be the two sides will find a way to work together happy. and we follow with recent news from the region violence has flared up again in the palestinian territory in the northern west bank several palestinians were reportedly injured when israeli security forces fired on them after the troops were pelted with stones and bottles the trouble erupted after the soldiers disguised as vegetable sellers apparently tried to seize operatives of a local jihadist group checkpoints and blockades have been set up in the area follow our middle eastern correspondents updates on twitter just look for pelosi are our two young children and. they stampeded during a new year's celebrations in the ivory coast the largest city claimed the lives of at least sixty one and injured more than two hundred the tragedy occurred after the

end of a fireworks show performed at the city's stadium according to reports a large crowd leaving the spectacle crushed into a mass of people outside causing the stampede. couples between protesters and police have broken out at a march in hong kong demanding the resignation of the city's top political leader. has a face following the popularity and a no confidence vote against him since he came to power six months ago he was elected by a beijing backed committee of twelve hundred people. at least four people have been killed and dozens wounded after an explosion in a crowded area of pakistan's southern city of karachi police say the bomb was planted on a motorbike and detonated at the moment a political rally of the city's dominant party passed by no group has claimed responsibility for the attack on the liberal party but police suspected militants might have targeted the rally prior to upcoming general elections. russian politics

so i kremlin return for putin and fresh anti-government protests in two thousand and twelve although in smaller numbers than the year before party's political analyst watch the developments in the heart of the rallies he told my colleagues kevin owen and then he said now earlier how he sees that the protest mood in russia panning out. so it's kind of bleak but not hopeless ok we didn't come up with any new ideas new organization new faces in the pussy riot is that be leader of the opposition or it's pretty dreadful situation for the russian people and political development in general here is there was political change in this country and a positive change does make up the opposition as we said. it's a very interesting question because i have been to most of the major demonstrations and there were people there of goodwill in my opinion but then there were fascists there ok who were communists and these are people they're ok and it's your right to demonstrate i'm all for that. but they didn't accomplish anything but i could see they have no organization no unifying ideas except for i don't like but i'm

repeating this is not a very it's not a political agenda there were a few protests which i was out as well where it did seem like that was the method if you wanted to gain traction on this opposition movement do you see people coming out and take the train lost a lot of its novelty effect right now ok because political change takes leaders in years and years that have to be local this is what happens in political changes with countries that were what they were carrying at one time it takes a long time to get people involved in the process and that is happening very very strongly there's some people who want to really fast and they don't want to do it through elections they want power because they want power because they believe they deserve it and what about the fact that we're not going to see any presidential elections of course that all led up to being elected a third term this protest and now they're kind of down now oh i would say to people i mean if you want to continue to protest but you know join a political party there are forty four of them now you have

a choice ok get involved see one of the things i saw with a lot of the protesters is that they want someone else to do all the hard work ok they want to go out and wave a flag and say you know give out a slogan we don't want to do the hard nitty gritty work of political change and that's what they need to do. peter lavelle has been dissecting russian and global politics in his cross talk series throughout the past twelve months and archie dot com has plenty of the editions of the show for you to watch on demand. iran chooses a new president in june mahmoud ahmadinejad has served his maximum two terms and if there's a little clue as to who will replace him to tackle the almost inexhaustible tension with the west over tehran's nuclear program journalist afshin rattansi who's often shared his insights on iran with r t doesn't expect the new leader to bend to four and will. i think we people of iran elect see foreign policy things are going to be much the same people are already talking

about the mayor of tehran at the moment i was in a job himself present in a job as the mayor of tehran for the new mayor of tehran ghalibaf and people are talking about him. perhaps winning in june because it's too early and is notoriously difficult to predict iranian elections as to whether they will be as hardline and again the tone in the terminology of western corporate media on this or bizarre and they just get islamic extremists in all sorts of different morning because the point is iran is that stay in terms of forging a very different type of developing nation and economy because it has all that oil and has all those resources and it's not going to suddenly start changing things the way the i.m.f. or the way that washington wants it to be let's now look at some other stories you can find on our website the vatican is ratcheting up its security. a new swipe card

system limited after last year's information breach scandal is dedicated to preventing any more very leaks from occurring. also a photo finish for two thousand and twelve we've lined up a gallery of eye catching snapshots of stories that captured worldwide attention in the past year. two thousand and thirteen has made it in around the globe with a ray of fireworks performances in cheering crowds here in russia the new year officially kicked off with the traditional chime of the country's main clock on one of the kremlin's towers. across the atlantic over

a million spectators descended on new york's iconic times square to celebrate the event with the traditional drop of the crystal ball and one of the most spectacular shows unveiled was in brazil where some two point five million revolution gathered on the famous beach and there were mixed emotions regarding the year that passed with some sad to see it end but many more hopeful that two thousand and thirteen will see better times are to use. it's a fanciful look at the world that could have been. twenty twelve was certainly full of disappointing headlines hope fueled by the arab spring turned into the turmoil of the arab autumn the war in syria claimed countless lives and a fiscal crisis saw the european union torn apart at its very seams now the problems facing our world today certainly don't offer themselves up to an easy fix what if things had turned out differently what if opportunities were actually sees

the pawn instead of missed well here's our look at the twenty twelve headlines that could have been. diplomacy succeeds in syria ending bloody conflict. instead this was the image of syria the world saw increasingly violent clashes between government forces and the opposition had claimed more than forty thousand lives efforts to negotiate a diplomatic solution fell flat because divisions ripped apart both the country and the international community hundreds of thousands of refugees have fled to neighboring states where many have found conditions to be dismal meanwhile syria's war is threatening to spill over its borders as tensions escalate within and in the region. atomic triumph sanctions slashed as iran's nuclear to accept. gunning to end gun fire the u.s. rules to restrict firearms mideast peace is. two states packed with palestine.

yet this was their reality israel's assault on palestinian militants in gaza israel's anti-missile shield repelled most attacks on its territory but a strike claimed the lives of more than one hundred sixty palestinians many of them civilians despite harsh condemnation from many in the international community the war and israel's subsequent decision to construct three thousand new settlements effectively slammed the door shut to any prospect of peace go through people power moment he step aside and let democracy in. get lost get most notorious kuantan in my prison permanently shot. euro zone cuts the cuts and lifts austerity. but the news of austerity only tightened as deep public sector cuts brought thousands of angry demonstrators to the streets of greece spain italy and portugal. the worst economic crisis of a generation has battered the european union's very foundations exacerbating

tensions between member states with some regions now desperately wanting out i grew up in a europe that was divided from east to west going to europe it is divided from the self i've never at any point in the history of this union has there been more discord of rank that we covered. corporate cash for the campaign coffers as part of the us political please. know we here for u.k. british quit the european union. we can expound julie on the solyndra point to the un free speech and. instead a song remains a political refugee at ecuador's london embassy where he's been granted asylum he continues to fight extradition to sweden over alleged sex crimes charges that he says are politically motivated and tied to his work in leaking international government secrets. the power of people speaking up and resisting together

to terrify corrupt democratic power so much so that ordinary people here in the west and the enemy of governments an enemy to be watched and enemy to be can flow and to be impoverished. true democracy is not the white house true democracy is not camera true democracy is the resistance of people with the truth against lies from top to right here in london every day ordinary people teach us that democracy is free speech and just sent. from heretics to hero american whistleblower bradley manning finally free. droning on the whole nations agree to end iraq of remote controlled war. egypt's arab spring sees democracy defeat hardline islam is. the reality on the ground was anything but egyptian president mohamed morsi is fouled like power grab unleashed

fury and frenzied street battles and a fast track to constitutional overhaul referendum left a bitter opposition eager for change for them two thousand and twelve saw the arab spring transform into an egyptian nightmare had the revolution to get rid of a tyrant to dictators. in order to that we made elections and the revolution and elections to choose someone to the present us and turned out that this guy is also a tyrant himself but he has had lines may have been the stuff of imagination but that sea of twenty thirteen i want them to live with the confidence of our team moscow. well coming up we meet an orthodox priest who built an entire village for his adopted children all seventy of them after a break right here are to. humanise

his day starts at five am even earlier in the winter tending to his flock of three hundred sheep in the mountains in panes of t.v. thirty five years old it wasn't the life he dreamt of having studied accounting but he dition and familiar duty dictated that he would take on the care of these animals after his father. has just made camp at their winter found stage setting up his new it judicial to fenian round tent made of diskin. his p.c. back amongst his family as his job is a lonely one and tough going out in a way there's braving extremes of plus to minus forty degrees celsius it's just that i miss them there are certain difficulties there's not enough time for everything i'm almost alone and my sister works with my mother my mother is seventy five she's very old and you know i miss mountains when i'm in town and of course i

spend a lot of time here right now probably so on the survey i simply carrying out the work that his father did and his father before him nothing has changed over many many centuries and that's half the problem it's hard work and many people don't want to come into in stream now and it's really fit there could die out altogether . it's difficult to manage everything alone i used to have people who helped me but they were no good they didn't take care of the sheep with all their heart they hurt the cattle. with more people leaving than coming to the countryside the region's government is having to act making the life of a herd and more attractive than promising largest subsidies for produce and lie stock and organizing cooperatives for the sale of de products to ensure the herd a gets a higher fairer price i sympathize with those youngsters leaving for an easier more profitable life day in their publics capital because ill but he no longer wishes to join them he enjoys his pastoral way of life.